Captain Jonathan Toews on the importance of the Blackhawks starting out strong in the playoffs.

Captain Jonathan Toews on the importance of the Blackhawks starting out strong in the playoffs.

Halfway through the season -- heck, as late as a month ago -- the St. Louis Blues were the team you wanted to avoid in the playoffs. You wanted to avoid them for as long as possible.

They were good and getting better with the addition of a big-name goaltender at the trade deadline. They were a big team that killed opponents physically and made them like it. They hurt teams on the scoreboard and made it worse.

If it’s any consolation for all the misery the Cardinals have dealt out over the years, Cubs fans, the Blues are paying it back by looking every bit like your baseball team when it matters most, having lost their last six games to give the Central Division to the Avalanche.

Miller rolled after the trade and looked like he was going to be the difference everyone said he would be. His 7-0-1 start backed up the belief he was going to win the Blues their first Cup, a futility streak approaching half of where the Cubs stand.

But now, pffft.

Starting with the game where the Hawks chased him in the second period, Miller has lost eight of 11 heading into the playoffs. He had given up four goals in almost half of those games. Excluding an empty-net goal, he has allowed fewer than three goals only three times in that 11-game stretch that covers almost the last month of the season.

Hockey’s playoffs certainly can turn quickly. That’s the randomness of the sport. Miller could suddenly revert to the guy the Blues believed they were getting. But of late, with a goals-against average pushing 3.0 and a save percentage under .900, Miller has looked like a first-round out.

Not only have the Hawks beaten Miller, they recently beat backup goalie Brian Elliott. What else you got?

Ken Hitchcock has the past, that’s what. The past is what he was reduced to citing, apparently. When the Hawks smothered the Blues a couple Sundays ago, Hitchcock was asked about the Hawks’ winning two in a row over the crumbling Blues, to which the coach of the crumbling Blues could answer only that people should look at the season series.

Lame answer, Hitch. Lame and desperate. The games the Blues won came when the Blues could play hockey. They stopped doing that once the Hawks beat Miller. The Blues have been shut out five times in the last 14 games, including back-to-back to end the season.

It’s not the best team that wins a playoff series or the Stanley Cup, it’s the team that’s playing the best, and as wonky as the Hawks have played down the stretch, with and without their captain and another great offensive star, they are playing better than the Blues. Geez, everybody is.

The Blues, it would appear, are pulling off the magic act of simultaneously gripping both their sticks and their throats too tightly at the wrong time. Which makes it the right time for the Hawks to face them.